A place where everybody just wants to be happy set in a world of colours: Habitat is the name of a mysterious community where sad people go to try to discover again how to smile, a sort of surreal rehab for unhappy people. The player must help different characters, including kids, a photographer, or a clown, to be happy again. So why the place looks like hiding a creepy secret? Maybe because the doctor in charge only shows himself to people as a puppet? The world of Smile for Me is full of secrets, weird characters, and small creepy details. You can check more in the big article about towns with a dark secret here: Towns with a Dark Secret: the most hermetic, cryptic, and bizarre communities at the core of open-world games [Updated October 2021].
Smile for Me also feature a day/night cycle, where you can help people during the day and must run back to bed during the night. In fact, this is because the mad doctor established a curfew for everybody on the island. When night approaches, the screen will get more and more distorted, and the sound more muffled. Since that, the player has around one minute to go back to bed to wake up the next day. Failing to do that will have very uncomfortable consequences.
Every time you miss the curfew, a very creepy video will play. They are always real videos, of low quality, where somebody is just recording dark and disturbing places. Sometimes it is just a corridor engulfed in darkness, while other times a forest at night or a dirty hole in the wall. The doctor will silently speak to the player through writing above the videos. Often, the messages have no connection with the creepy video behind them. In the beginning, the doctor will just warn you not to break the curfew, but later on, his warnings will get far more creepy. For example, the doctor will point at something in the darkness as if you are not alone. Can you truly see something through the darkness? However, the most disturbing detail is when the pissed doctor will remind you about how you come back at night after breaking the curfew. Who is bringing you home and tucking you in bed?
The disturbing videos playing at night add another layer of surreal uneasiness. Plus, the mysterious atmosphere is enhanced by the intentional lack of information regarding hidden gameplay elements, which will definitively worry the player. How many times can I break the curfew before something really bad happens? What will happen after breaking the curfew for the last time? Because if it is true that by sleeping late, you will also wake up later, having less time to solve quests, on the other hand, it is unclear what the long-term effect is.
These are only a part of the open questions that will cross the mind of new players while trying to solve the mystery behind Habitat and the doctor in charge. I will not spoil more about what will happen after breaking too many curfews, but if you are curious, you can check the following video on the Surreal and Creepy YouTube channel:
Surreal and Creepy 